(B)OrderS Centre Workshop: Transdisciplinary Conversations on Solidarity, Migration, and (International) Law

When: Thursday, May 30, 2024 - Friday, May 31, 2024, 10:00 AM - 3:30 PM
Where: 22 Washington Square North, NYU School of Law, Jean Monnet Center, NY 10011

This event is invitation only. Please contact the organisers if you'd like to attend. The times given above are in Eastern Time.

Organisers:

• Professor Alexandra Délano Alonso (The New School)
• Professor Violeta Moreno-Lax (Queen Mary University of London, NYU and University of Barcelona)
• Professor Jaya Ramji-Nogales (Temple, Beasley Law School)

About the event

Contemporary international law has recently grappled with solidarity as a principle/value active in different domains. However, its role concerning migration has been ambivalent, furthering different types of responses. When incorporated in legislation and official policy measures, solidarity tends to operate on a vertical plane, following a hierarchical, State-centred approach that tends to favour government interests. By contrast, when mobilized by civil society organizations and grass-roots movements, solidarity works along a horizontal axis, creating community across territorial boundaries through the recognition of shared humanity. Its normative content and effect are malleable, supporting competing claims by different actors both in furtherance of and in opposition to migrants’ rights and welfare. Scholars and activists have explored the intersection of migration, law, and solidarity from different perspectives, relying on the principle in different ways. Against this background, this workshop engages critically with the relationship between solidarity and migration as mediated by (international) law, seeking to explore the conflicts and tensions inherent in responses to the mobility of people from the perspectives of activism, advocacy, and academia. This transdisciplinary dialogue seeks to examine the concept of solidarity, its different manifestations, paradoxes, and possibilities when it is deployed in response to the needs of migrant populations or as a call to support or accompany their struggles and mobilizations.

Programme

Day One: Thursday 30 May

10:00: Registration opens

10:45-11:00: Welcome and introduction (by convenors)

11:00-12:30: Solidarity as Shared Goal, Direct Action, or Human Right?

• Lisa Ariemma (University of Toronto) Solidarity as ‘Shared Goal’
• Nayelli Torres-Salas (Otros Dreams en Acción) Solidarity as a Form of ‘Direct Action’
• Professor Cecilia Bailliet (Oslo and UN Independent Expert on Human Rights and International Solidarity) Is there a Right to and/or Duty of Solidarity under International Law?

Chair / commentator: Professor Linda Bosniak (Rutgers Law School)

12:30-13:30: Lunch

13:30-15:00: The Ambivalence of Solidarity and the Language of Law

• Séan Binder (Free Humanitarians) The Ambivalence of Solidarity and its Exclusionary Effects
• Dr Isabella Trombetta (NYU, Center for European and Mediterranean Studies) The Downgrading Impact of Solidarity vis-à-vis the Language of Rights
• Professor Jaya Ramji-Nogales (Temple, Beasley Law School) The Role of Law vs the Role of Solidarity

Chair / commentator: Professor Shannon Gleeson (Cornell University)

15:00-15:30: Coffee break

15:30-17:00: Solidarity as Dialectical (Counter)force

• Sara Soto (Espacio Migrante) Solidarity as Generator of Community and Form of Resistance
• Dr Gabriella Sánchez (Georgetown University) Solidarity’s Hijacking by Different Actors
• Professor Obi Okafor (John Hopkins University and former UN Independent Expert on Human Rights and International Solidarity) De-solidarity Dynamics Mediated by Law

Chair / commentator: Dr Barbara Buckinx (Princeton School of Public and International Affairs)

19:30: Dinner (restaurant to be confirmed)

Day Two: Friday 31 May

10:00-11:30: Solidarity as Legal Mobilisation

• Luba Cortés (Make the Road, New York) The Role of Law (and “Lawfare”) in Advancing Solidarity
• Professor Ayten Gündogdu (Barnard College, Columbia University) and Professor Çiğdem Çidam (Union College) The Invocation of Law as Solidarity-based Political Resistance
• Professor Violeta Moreno-Lax (Queen Mary University of London, NYU and University of Barcelona) (Re)constructing “Civil Obedience”, Defining “State Disobedience”

Chair / commentator: Elora Mukherjee (Columbia Law School)

11:30-13:00: Lunch and informal whole-group discussion on definition of solidarity

13:00-15:00: Fifth panel: Solidarity for systemic change

• Haddy Gassama (UndocuBlack) Solidarity as Glue between Different Communities (Forced Together)
• Professor Miriam Ticktin (CUNY Graduate Center) Solidarity as “Common Cause” and “Commoning” as Inclusion
• Dr Joyce De Coninck (NYU and Ghent University) Solidarity as Modulator of Human Rights Obligations
• Professor Alexandra Délano Alonso (The New School) Difference-based Solidarity as Force for Systemic Change

Chair / commentator: Dr Amelia Frank-Vitale (Barnard College, Columbia University)

15:00-15:30: Final reflections, publication plans and way forward (by convenors)